words, yet “this reading conveyed no meaning to him,” Dr. Itard wrote sadly.
Dr. Itard made labels: BOOK and SCISSORS and HAMMER . He showed Victor the labels, then told him to get what was on them. Back and forth Victor would go, from his room to Dr. Itard’s study. “He often stopped in the corridor, put his face to the window which is at one end of it, greeted with sharp cries the sight of the country which unfolds magnificently in the distance, and then set off again for his room, got his little cargo, renewed his homage to the ever-regretted beauties of nature, and returned to me quite sure of the correctness of his errand,” Itard wrote.
When Victor did well at his lessons and his teacher praised him, happiness would spread across his face. He’d laugh out loud. But other times, when he didn’t understand, he’d become deeply unhappy. “I have seen him moisten with his tears the characters which are so unintelligible to him, although he has not been provoked by any word of reproach, threat, or punishment,” Itard wrote.
And still, the lessons went on.
Dr. Itard blindfolded Victor and had him listen to different sounds: a bell, a drum, a wind instrument, even the ringing of a rod struck upon a fire shovel. Victor liked these lessons — he used to bring the blindfold to Dr. Itard and “stamp with joy when he felt my hands tie it firmly behind his head.”
Dr. Itard said the sounds of the vowels (“Oh! Oh!”) and had Victor raise a different finger for each of the letters
a, e, i, o
, and
u
.
Dr. Itard had Victor watch his teacher’s face and imitate the expressions he made. “Thus we have instructor and pupil facing each other and grimacing their hardest.” After that, Dr. Itard had Victor try to imitate his voice when he talked. But the sounds Victor made now were less like talking than they had been, long ago, when the lessons first began.
Once, on a day when Victor’s lessons had gone particularly badly, Dr. Itard sat down in despair. He recalled it later in his writings.
“‘Unhappy creature,’ I cried as if he could hear me, and with real anguish of heart, ‘since my labors are wasted and your efforts fruitless, take again the road to your forests and the taste for your primitive life. Or . . . go . . . die of misery and boredom at Bicêtre.’
“Scarcely had I finished speaking,” Dr. Itard wrote, “when I saw his chest heave noisily, his eyes shut, and a stream of tears escape through his closed eyelids, with him the signs of bitter grief.”
Itard wrote that at times he wished he’d never met the wild boy. Sometimes he wondered whether it had been right, so long ago, to tear the boy from his old, happy life in the forest and bring him to live in Paris.
But now, of course, it was too late.
W ITHIN THE HIGH WALLS of the Institute for Deaf-Mutes, the boy who was called Victor grew into a young man of about eighteen.
Then, one day in June of 1806, a letter arrived at the Institute, addressed to Dr. Itard. It was from the French Minister of the Interior, an office now held not by Lucien Bonaparte, the wild boy’s eccentric friend, but by one of his successors, Jean-Baptiste de Champagny. “I know, sir, that your care of the young Victor who was entrusted to you five years ago has been as generous as it has been diligent,” the Minister wrote.
For all those years, ever since Lucien Bonaparte first authorized it, the government had been sending money to the Institute for Deaf-Mutes to pay for Victor’s education. Now, the current Minister wrote, it was “essential for humanity and for science to know the results.”
And what could Dr. Itard say?
He would have to tell the Minister that Victor had not learned to speak.
The experiment Dr. Itard had begun with such “brilliant hopes” had ended in failure. And it was not just Victor’s failure, but Dr. Itard’s as well. He claimed that for himself, he didn’t care. “As for me,” he wrote, “I am quite indifferent
Dr. Itard made labels: BOOK and SCISSORS and HAMMER . He showed Victor the labels, then told him to get what was on them. Back and forth Victor would go, from his room to Dr. Itard’s study. “He often stopped in the corridor, put his face to the window which is at one end of it, greeted with sharp cries the sight of the country which unfolds magnificently in the distance, and then set off again for his room, got his little cargo, renewed his homage to the ever-regretted beauties of nature, and returned to me quite sure of the correctness of his errand,” Itard wrote.
When Victor did well at his lessons and his teacher praised him, happiness would spread across his face. He’d laugh out loud. But other times, when he didn’t understand, he’d become deeply unhappy. “I have seen him moisten with his tears the characters which are so unintelligible to him, although he has not been provoked by any word of reproach, threat, or punishment,” Itard wrote.
And still, the lessons went on.
Dr. Itard blindfolded Victor and had him listen to different sounds: a bell, a drum, a wind instrument, even the ringing of a rod struck upon a fire shovel. Victor liked these lessons — he used to bring the blindfold to Dr. Itard and “stamp with joy when he felt my hands tie it firmly behind his head.”
Dr. Itard said the sounds of the vowels (“Oh! Oh!”) and had Victor raise a different finger for each of the letters
a, e, i, o
, and
u
.
Dr. Itard had Victor watch his teacher’s face and imitate the expressions he made. “Thus we have instructor and pupil facing each other and grimacing their hardest.” After that, Dr. Itard had Victor try to imitate his voice when he talked. But the sounds Victor made now were less like talking than they had been, long ago, when the lessons first began.
Once, on a day when Victor’s lessons had gone particularly badly, Dr. Itard sat down in despair. He recalled it later in his writings.
“‘Unhappy creature,’ I cried as if he could hear me, and with real anguish of heart, ‘since my labors are wasted and your efforts fruitless, take again the road to your forests and the taste for your primitive life. Or . . . go . . . die of misery and boredom at Bicêtre.’
“Scarcely had I finished speaking,” Dr. Itard wrote, “when I saw his chest heave noisily, his eyes shut, and a stream of tears escape through his closed eyelids, with him the signs of bitter grief.”
Itard wrote that at times he wished he’d never met the wild boy. Sometimes he wondered whether it had been right, so long ago, to tear the boy from his old, happy life in the forest and bring him to live in Paris.
But now, of course, it was too late.
W ITHIN THE HIGH WALLS of the Institute for Deaf-Mutes, the boy who was called Victor grew into a young man of about eighteen.
Then, one day in June of 1806, a letter arrived at the Institute, addressed to Dr. Itard. It was from the French Minister of the Interior, an office now held not by Lucien Bonaparte, the wild boy’s eccentric friend, but by one of his successors, Jean-Baptiste de Champagny. “I know, sir, that your care of the young Victor who was entrusted to you five years ago has been as generous as it has been diligent,” the Minister wrote.
For all those years, ever since Lucien Bonaparte first authorized it, the government had been sending money to the Institute for Deaf-Mutes to pay for Victor’s education. Now, the current Minister wrote, it was “essential for humanity and for science to know the results.”
And what could Dr. Itard say?
He would have to tell the Minister that Victor had not learned to speak.
The experiment Dr. Itard had begun with such “brilliant hopes” had ended in failure. And it was not just Victor’s failure, but Dr. Itard’s as well. He claimed that for himself, he didn’t care. “As for me,” he wrote, “I am quite indifferent
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